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When traveling across borders, there is a universally recognized rule: if you want to cross borders from China, look to Shenzhen; if you want to cross borders from Shenzhen, look to Bantian.
Longgang Bantian - This important cross-border e-commerce distribution center in Shenzhen has gathered more than 20,000 cross-border e-commerce companies. Data shows that the scale of cross-border e-commerce transactions in Longgang District reached 170 billion yuan in 2022, of which Bantian made a significant contribution. This place is far from the bustling city center, but it is home to a large number of industrial parks and office buildings standing side by side. Any old and inconspicuous building may hide a billion-dollar seller that dominates the cross-border business war. Bantian is also the birthplace of the cross-border e-commerce dream of making a fortune. Countless grassroots have successfully counterattacked here, and many myths of selling from 0 to billions of dollars in annual sales have been born, such as the Bantian Five Tigers, who were once as famous as the Four Young Masters of South China City. Their overseas legends were also popular in the circle, becoming synonymous with the myth of getting rich quickly in cross-border e-commerce. The cross-border e-commerce industry has experienced its ups and downs, and people have come and gone. Today, Sakata is still the same Sakata, but the Five Tigers are no longer the same Five Tigers.
When mentioning the Bantian Five Tigers, one must inevitably compare them with the South China City Four Young Masters. Compared with the former who are constantly involved in "gossip", the Bantian Five Tigers are more mysterious and low-key. There are not many public performance data revealed in the industry, and little is known about their actual operating conditions. Many sellers' impression of them mostly stays on the general concept of "super-selling products", and they don't even know which specific companies they are referring to. There is a saying that the reason for giving such a nickname is that, on the one hand, people are worried that a single company will be too well-known and are unwilling to be the first to stand out; on the other hand, the advantageous resources are mostly owned by South China City. The big sellers occupy the market, so they hope to attract more resources through joint operations. However, after checking and collating relevant information, it can be found that the development trajectories of the Bantian Five Tigers more or less overlapped at a certain historical moment. Rooted in Shenzhen, a Feng Shui treasure land belonging to export and foreign trade, their rise story is deeply engraved in the growth history of Bantian cross-border e-commerce.
1.Leading Tiger - Baoshijia
Among the Five Tigers of Sakata, Bao Shijia, who has been active in the martial arts world for more than 16 years, is a leader. Just like all the big-name sellers we imagine, Baoshijia’s main categories cover dozens of fields and over 100,000 kinds of goods, and it has built a huge business empire by relying on massive SKUs. Baoshijia's business vision is also very grand: to build a cross-border e-commerce Wal-Mart. To this end, Baoshijia has established dozens of branches in China and overseas in Europe and the United States, and its business covers more than 200 countries and regions around the world. In terms of sales channel layout, it is not deeply tied to Amazon alone. Its main platforms include AliExpress, eBay, Lazada, etc. , Wish and other e-commerce giants from various countries. Like many cross-border companies with a pan-category and pan-SKU model, Baoshijia tests hot-selling products through large-scale distribution and divides the market with scale effect. However, it also has its own unique distribution strategy: focusing on supply chain integration , independently developed systems and widely deployed overseas warehouses. The most well-known news about him in recent years are that he was involved in a wave of account bans and that he was exposed to have led more than 3,000 employees to move out of the original office building overnight. As one of the earliest big sellers who started out by distributing products, Baoshijia is naturally not immune to the gray area of fake orders and reviews, but there is no definite news about the specific account suspension. As for the latter, Baoshijia stated that the relocation of the office building is an internal development plan of the company.
2. Smart Tiger - Lens Network
As the name suggests, Zhiduohu is full of wisdom and strategy. And Lens Network has always been able to make wise choices at critical moments. More than ten years ago, a newly graduated college student took a scholarship of 20,000 yuan and went straight to Amazon to do mobile phone integration business. In 2007, he founded Lens Trading, the prototype of Lens Network. At that time, the concept of cross-border e-commerce had not yet been formally formed, but like many forward-looking people going overseas, Lens Technology Trade plunged into the transformation from traditional foreign trade to foreign trade e-commerce. It was not until 2014, when cross-border e-commerce became popular, that it reached a crucial turning point - it moved to Bantian Guangyayuan Industrial Zone and changed its name to Lens Technology Network, thus completing its transformation into a cross-border distribution and salesman. The multi-channel pan-SKU model is also the winning formula for Lens Technology's rapid rise. Its main products cover dozens of categories such as fashion jewelry, health and beauty, 3C electronics, etc. Its sales channels include third-party B2C platforms such as eBay, Amazon, Wish, and its own shopping malls, with markets covering more than 100 countries and regions around the world. Like Baoshijia, Lens Technology also attaches great importance to the polishing of the supply chain, building storage centers in China and building overseas warehouses in the U.S. In recent years, it has continuously increased its investment in IT technology, optimized business decisions through data intelligence, and used information technology to efficiently manage the business model of multiple categories, multiple suppliers, and multiple warehouses. Lens Technology also has limited public operating data, but it was once a subsidiary of Wish. The super seller with the highest sales volume. But nowadays, it is not only the distribution model that is being abandoned by the times, Wish is also declining. From its recruitment information, we can see that among the main platforms, only Wish has not released relevant job requirements, which can be inferred that the business scale has shrunk or shifted its focus.
3. Strategic Tiger - Zehui Technology
Judging from the title of "Strategy Tiger", Zehui Technology must have some outstanding qualities in strategic planning. Founded in 2011, Zehui's product lines cover clothing accessories, beauty and cosmetics, 3C electronics and other categories, and it also has hundreds of its own brands. So far, Zehui has connected sales channels such as eBay, Amazon, AliExpress, and Walmart, and has language sites in English, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, covering more than 180 countries and regions around the world. Public information shows that Zehui has created a professional integrated cross-border e-commerce management system for overseas product consulting, product sales, customer service, logistics operations, etc. In a nutshell, efficiency and innovation are the keywords of Zehui's strategic layout. Under the distribution model, the management of any chain, such as production and sales, inventory, and orders, is arduous and complicated. For this reason, Zehui's choice is to continuously upgrade and iterate IT capabilities and empower the rapidly developing diversified business through technology. Because of this, although Zehui’s qualifications are not as good as the above-mentioned two tigers, it has risen rapidly with its extraordinary strategy and is on par with them. 4. Wolf King Tiger - Male Wolf Technology
Gonglang Technology, which was founded at the same time as Zehui, operates products in many categories including clothing, home furnishings, and beauty products, and has tens of thousands of high-quality supplier resources. Its business covers more than 100 countries and regions including the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Both are distribution models and started at almost the same time, but their operating logics are different. Gonglang introduces itself as follows: using Internet thinking + branding + localization + omni-channel operation model to make Chinese local products face the world and go global. The reason why Gonglang has emerged as a rising star is largely due to its forward-looking strategic vision, which is reflected in its supply chain tactical layout. As early as 2015, Gonglang established the Western Operations Center in the United States, and built a 10-square-meter eastern warehouse in the United States in 2017. By building its own domestic and foreign warehousing systems, it has laid a good foundation for the rapid development of its business scale. Relying on its self-developed efficient and intelligent software system, big data technology and data-driven operation model, Gonglang is able to achieve deep vertical integration of the supply chain and realize efficient overseas expansion. However, the male wolf, which is fast-paced, seems to be a bit weak. After experiencing explosive growth in 2017, the development momentum has weakened in recent years. This is also the inevitable bottleneck faced by many bulk sellers.
5. The fifth person who disappeared
There is a lot of controversy about this last "tiger". When searching for information about the Sakata Five Tigers on the Internet, it is discovered that the "Fifth Man" is often described as Jiandan.com, but there are reports that Jiandan.com's export business was halted many years ago. In addition, a small number of people also include Zhihui Chuangxiang in the group, which is more in line with the Sakata Five Tigers in terms of scale and popularity. However, some industry insiders pointed out that Haohan Legend is the real "fifth person". The company was established in 2013 and was formerly known as Shenzhen Fengzhicai Trading Co., Ltd., but its size is obviously smaller than the other four tigers, and there is very little information related to it.
It is believed that the rise of the Bantian Five is closely linked to the rapid development of Shenzhen's cross-border e-commerce. There are several key time points that need to be remembered: Google entered China in 2005 and implanted traffic thinking into the business philosophy of Chinese sellers; Amazon and Wish entered China in 2012, and the third-party platform sales model provided a natural and suitable soil for traffic gameplay; in 2014, the concept of cross-border e-commerce was officially produced, and the industry entered the fast lane of development. As mentioned above, most of the Sakata Five Tigers were born between 2007 and 2011. The common point for their sudden rise is that they all firmly grasped the unique dividends of the times. In that golden age of rapid development, one only needed to carry thousands or tens of thousands of hot-selling products and cast a wide net on different e-commerce platforms to easily catch big fish. The Sakata Five Tigers were at the forefront of the industry, recruiting people crazily during the bonus period, expanding continuously, and growing rapidly from 0 to an overseas giant with annual sales of billions. The industry was booming from 2014 to 2017, and most of the Bantian Five Tigers entered the fast lane of development during this period. Take Baoshijia as an example, its annual revenue achieved a leap-forward growth from 1 billion to 5 billion from 2015 to 2018. Another commonality is that the characteristics of the distribution model determine that the Bantian Five Tigers attach great importance to the integration and polishing of the supply chain. Combined with the above, we can see that the Bantian Five Tigers mostly practice the model of self-built domestic warehousing system + independent research and development system, using digital empowerment + technology to drive the operation efficiency of each sales link. As one of the shining stars in the golden age of distribution, the Sakata Five Tigers left their own deep mark in that glorious period. However, the wheel of the industry is rolling forward, and the tide of change has already spread inadvertently. The gameplay of extensive operation and traffic is king is no longer effective, and brands have taken over instead. The Sakata Five Tigers, who have taken the distribution model to the extreme and have achieved huge sales, have, to a certain extent, a development mentality that is outdated and incompatible with the times. When the account ban wave broke out in 2021, in addition to the well-known South China City Four Young Masters who suffered heavy losses, the Sakata Five Tigers were also exposed to be involved. There is no definite answer to the specific situation, but under the general trend of compliant operations, the early "brushing orders and controlling reviews" gameplay will inevitably be abandoned. However, the biggest difference between the Bantian Five Tigers and the South China City Four Young Masters is that the former are not listed, while the latter have entered the capital market through mergers and acquisitions, which has also buried unavoidable risks . "Although the Bantian Five Tigers are distributing goods, they are not listed, and the money goes into their own pockets. The epidemic has been enough to spend for several lifetimes. If the market is not good, they will directly shrink their scale. They can only make less money or suffer a small loss." A seller said bluntly. Under the trend of the industry, brand transformation is the general trend. Even the Sakata Five Tigers, who are selling products in bulk, can no longer continue to sell products in bulk. They must explore brand routes and diversify their development. However, it is difficult to turn around a big ship, and it is not possible to completely abandon backward thinking in the short term. A seller who is one of the five current sellers said: "Although it is still a distribution model, the links between FBA and overseas warehouses are gradually increasing (the growth momentum is very strong). There is a trend of gradual transformation, but it will take a long time. After all, the idea of distribution is still there. However, the number of employees has decreased a lot, and the liquidity is similar to before, but the profitability is better than before." The road to transformation is long, and the Sakata Five Tigers are constantly exploring the right path for development. But the only thing that remains unchanged is that they still maintain their low-key and mysterious original intention.
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